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constitutes a fact and what constitutes an opinion; and that these developments create interesting new problems for public institutions. There are problems of how to disentangle from the Smithsonian program occasional lapses into advocacy. For the Regents' information, there is a variety of past examples on which the staff will develop more meaningful background papers; at the same time, staff will review how the Smithsonian has handled controversy historically and outline the way in which it is currently reviewing these matters internally.

It was suggested that when the Smithsonian convenes an outside group to discuss such matters, special efforts should be made to ensure that the group is representative of more than the academic circles. Many useful perspectives could be gained from a discussion with the Smithsonian National Board.

A Regent also noted that a way should be found to charge the museum directors with the responsibility to detect the early warnings on some of these issues and deal with them before they become problems for the Institution as a whole. The Secretary agreed and pointed to the Smithsonian's current organizational studies that are examining chains of command that would function more effectively than the present management systems.

It was also suggested that still another challenge is how to keep somewhat separate from public programming the very complicated currents in the intellectual world which stir the interest of the staff but which are not of much interest to most people. This suggests the need to articulate a set of objectives for the Smithsonian as well as a process and a mechanism that will give the staff the best chance of achieving them. 

As this discussion was concluded, lists of representative Smithsonian exhibitions, public lectures, and television and film productions over the last year were distributed for the Regents' information. The Secretary 

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